Word: virginia
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Joiner. Flamboyant Louis Johnson, 58, has been performing such useful chores ever since he first hung out his law shingle in Clarksburg, W. Va. 37 years ago. At 26 he was the Democratic majority floor leader of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He returned from World War I as an infantry captain, soon became a $40,000-a-year corporation lawyer. But he never strayed far from politics...
...Strangers. Once, when Washington itself was only a malarial outpost on the banks of the Potomac, Virginia society considered the Government its own social corral. The entire U.S. Government consisted of less than 50 officials, and few were strangers to Virginia's hostesses. The ladies called familiarly at the White House, and Dolly Madison, with bird-of-paradise feathers nodding from her famed turbans, drove through the muddy streets to return the calls...
...Washington's gilded, gaslight age, the cave dwellers (native Washington society) took over. The last of their queens were wealthy Mrs. John R. McLean, a Virginia lady of formidable presence, and her convivial, raucous daughter-in-law, Evalyn Walsh McLean, who died in 1947. Evalyn wore a diamond (the Hope) as big as a tiger's eye, and called men impartially "darlin' boy." At her crowded parties (at the old and new "Friendship"), men had to bring their brains with them; Evalyn delighted in pairing mortal enemies at dinner. Said an old friend, admiringly: "Evalyn had spite...
...time Mrs. McLean rose to her zenith, the cave dwellers had retreated one by one to the hills, to ride to hounds over the Virginia and Maryland countryside, to gather at the Warrenton Hunt in their pink coats, or to sulk in their silken tents...
...well with Washington's envious cave dwellers. One refers to her as "Mrs. Thing," claims she has "a hide like an elephant." Another summed up: "She's amiable, of course, but she's commonplace, that's the word-so full of deportment." Adds Virginia-born Lady Astor, a past mistress of the catty crack: "She gives enormous parties that nobody who's anybody really ought...